Ok, so I WAS going to open with a pun about being able to see clearly in 2020, but I couldn’t quite visualise it…no matter, we can move on from that one! 2019 has gone, and to downplay it, it’s been quite a rough and turbulent year. Here’s to this next decade turning that around.

The Year in Running

So I’ve put below a screenshot of all of my running form July, when I started this.

It’s been a bit all over the shop, but I’m quite happy with nearly running 200km. My pace has been ok, something i’ll definitely look to improve on.

– Best Achievement: Actually Completing the marathon
– Worst: Not reaching my target of 1h 50m (2 minutes off!!!!!)

New year, New me

I’m not normally one who jumps on the “new year, new me” trend, with promises to become a better person (that sounded cynical but it’s not meant to be), but I really feel like giving this a decent try this year. So below, I’ve got a few very obtainable resolutions for my health, to help me knock the London Marathon out of the park.

• Run at least 3 times a week – These aren’t all going to be long distance, but I need to improve stamina
• Eat healthier.
• Keep updating this regularly
• Exercise more (weights and training)

Raising Money Still

So that’s all for now. As always, I need all of your help and support to raise the money needed. Please make sure this is shared with everyone possible.

http://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chrisgoodallrunning

Thank you to everyone who has donated over the last year. It means the world to me.

Much Love

Chris Nahajski

I was not built for running in the cold…

Ok so it’s been a while since I last updated this, which I apologise about and promise that I will be better at this. Let’s start with the fundraising updates this time 🙂

Thank you to the supporters I have had to this date (it’s almost becoming too many to mention) I’ve smashed past the 25% and it keeps going up and up, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for this! Please keep spreading the word (https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chrisgoodallrunning) and i’ll love you forever. It’s ambitious but i’d like to hit £900 before Christmas.

My First Half Marathon!

After the mess up with the Peterborough half marathon (standing in the rain for hours only to have the run cancelled is NOT my ideal form of fun!). My wife found that there was a half marathon sign up at the velodrome in London, which fell on her birthday! (Happy birthday Lisa). This was a much better day than the perkins one – Pictures below.

I managed this in 1 hour, 52 minutes and 45 seconds. I targeted 1 hour and 50 minutes, so 2 minutes off that isn’t too bad. Though I’ll need to improve this for the Cambridge one next year 🙂

Overall, a great run…although one hiccup on lap 3, My watch and tracker decided to die – which meant keeping the pace was a bit more of a challenge.

Final Notes

So that’s all for now, I’ll be doing another run today. and towards the end of the year I’ll post exactly how far i’ve run since I started this journey!

Thanks everyone 🙂 please remember to spread the word on this. Next update coming before Christmas! x

So it’s been an eventful week and a bit. Last time I posted I had mentioned that I was running the Perkins half marathon in Peterborough. Well here I am below…

Sadly though, this was as far as I got as the event was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute. The police say it was down to suspicious activity from someone along the course, but it was still a bit of a mood killer. I did feel bad for Lisa, Julie and Kay (my fab club) though…

Never mind though…there’s another half marathon booked in the 30th November (happy birthday Lisa!!!!!) so let’s look forward to that.

“If music was the food of love, then I’d be a big fat romantic slob” – Frank Turner

Yesterday, saw me reunite with an old friend in London.

Me and Sam have been friends and musical companions for a good part of 10 years. We’ve played a myriad (“myriad…nice!”) of shows throughout our times at uni and we’ve worked on charity projects before. This was another fantastic opportunity to play some music in London. And as always we smashed it…well in my eyes! But we did raise a little bit of money for Macmillan so it’s all good! There’ll be some audio files up in the near future so keep listening for that!

Fundraising Updates

I’ve finally broken £600 which is a fantastic start! I’m still on track and if a few things come through. I’ll have broken £1000 by the end of October 🤞Thanks and kudos need to go to the following people too;

• Carolyn
• Uncle Neil

That’s all for now. I’ll repost soon 🙂 x

please remember to donate via my justgiving page http://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chrisgoodallrunning

Ok so this time next week i’ll have completed my first half marathon. Quite a thought considering i still don’t class myself as a strong runner! But saying that, I think i’ve really made some headway over the past couple of weeks.

Running Updates and Training

The highlights from the last post to this one, is that I have managed, as a practice to complete a half marathon distance, courtesy of Grafham Water.

Not going to lie on this one, this run hurt the next day! Considering this was quite hilly, I’m feeling good about the Peterborough half marathon. I’d bought some SIS gels for a try-out on this run and they were pretty good. Definitely worth it!

Total Running Update

I’ve nearly hit 100km overall! Just got to keep it up!

Next stop…Peterborough!

Ok, so it’s been far too long since my last post and for that I am very sorry, August and September became very busy months! I started a new job, which became pretty time consuming. No matter…I’m back! and I’ve been busy!

Updates

• Distance Covered to date – 58.24km (36.19 miles), passing the marathon distance here! Just have to do it all at once!!!
• Furthest Distance in one run – 13.14km (~20km is the next target!)
• Funds raised to date – £500!! This is incredible, a huge thank you to everyone who has so far helped me to hit the 20% complete mark (more on that to follow…)

All about that training!

Well, I seem to have found a nice little rhythm at the moment when I run. I’m comfortable, it hurts a little less and I feel more energised! Since last updating this, I have run so much more. Below is a small breakdown of this;

I’m (usually) keeping a steady pace, which will help me use some maths to calculate an approximate finish time I should target. I know I want to be less than 4 hours, so there’s a starting benchmark.

While on the subject of personal goals etc. Last Sunday saw me climb my first mountain, Mt. Snowden;

It was a challenging 5 hour round trip with more scaling up rocks than path (Try the ‘miners trail’ at Snowden, it’s brutal!). I have to thank my wife, Lisa, My Brother in Law, John, and my Step-Father on law, Bobby. You guys helped push me to the top (for that all important top-of-the-world selfie!!!!). Gotta think of a new challenge next now!

So yeah, as far as the training goes, we’re making good progress! onwards and upwards now. I mean, what’s a marathon to a mountain eh?! This weekend will be my first real challenge though. I am running form my mother in law’s house (brampton), to Grafham (7 miles) and then around Grafham Water (~9 miles). This will be a good testament to how I cope with a (half) marathon.

In small news, I got myself some new headphones! These don’t actually go in the ear, they’re bone conductors, which mean I can run to my soundtrack and hear! Very helpful!

It’s Time for some Thanks!

Now, over the past month, gifts and donations have been coming in quite strongly and it’s giving me such a boost in confidence! Below are some of the people who have donated to date;

• Babcia
• Piotr
• Carolyn M
• Gina
• Matt D
• George M
• Katherine
• Lauren
• Barracudas Activity Camps
• Spiros
• Bobby
• Rita
• Amanda and Nick
• Sharon
• Lindsay

You have all been an incredible support so far! Thank you so so much for everything!

As well as the donations, there have been a number of local businesses offering gifts for a raffle (this is coming up soon). Thanks to the following companies below;

• Costa
• Bella Italia
• Nandos
• Pizza Express
• Wetherspoon (Huntingdon)
• Café Nero
• HBK Leisure
• Sports Direct Fitness

Thank you for all of the gifts! They will be raffled off for the charity 🙂

Lastly…

I got all of my pack through for the Perkins half marathon (minus the T-Shirt) less than 30 days until I run! Wish me luck!

As always, please, please, PLEASE, share this with as many people as you can! The more people donating, the more money Macmillan will get. Plus you get to occasionally muse on my inner ramblings via this blog! 🙂

Please check the website http://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chrisgoodallrunning for every opportunity to donate.

Much Love! x

The ball’s rolling…

So it seems to have been an age since I updated this, I guess I had dropped the ball slightly but we’re still here and we’re still going strong.

Workouts

• Total distance run – 18.12km
• Furthest distance in one run – 8.71km

Since I last updated this I’ve really begun to enjoy running again. I have been using an app called STRAVA to help track them.

Fundraising

• Total Money Raised so Far – £325

I really want to express and send my thanks to everyone who has so far donated! you’re all awesome!

I also want to thank Barracudas Activity Camps (https://www.barracudas.co.uk) for helping to donate an outstanding £200 to my cause. Thank you so much!!!

If the Shoe Fits…

So I also went and bought myself some nice running shoes for the marathon / half marathon. Not going to lie, this was a weird experience having to try multiple shoes on on a treadmill. But I did discover after much testing, that I need to work on my butt…More on that to follow!!!

For now, that’s all! I’m going to attempt a 10km run this weekend, I’ll update you all on how this goes! x

Taking things by the half!

Well what a start to my fundraising! it’s been a week since I set this up and my total amount raised just hit £115!!! I want to thank the following people so far for supporting me;

• Bobby Bragg
• Rita Taylor
• Lindsay Smith
• Nick, Amanda and the family
• Sharon Thorpe

You have all been amazing so far!!! Thank you 🙂

So this week I took a step into the right direciton (or 13.1 miles worth of steps). I signed up to complete my first half marathon! I will be running the Pearson’s Half Marathon in Peterborough on the 13th October – Wish me luck! (and Nick, I’ll see you there!)

I really want to use this as an opportunity to try out my fundraising idea number 1 – a sponsored playlist. The idea behind this, is that for £1 anyone can pick ANY (there are some exceptions, after I spent the weekend listening to something called “the poo poo song”) song they want. I will add this to my playlist on spotify or apple music (I havent yet decided which one I’m using). Spread the word on this! I want as many song suggestions as possible!

The weekly training update

• Current Weight – 11st 12.2lb
• Runs completed – 0
• Total Miles covered – 0
• Workouts completed – 0

Now I know this looks bare, but I have a plan in place. I will be running three times a week and working out four times. Below is my workout schedule

A Little Bit More About Mum

Now at the end of these little updates, I wanted to post a little story about mum, or a little fact. When I spoke at her funeral, I really leant towards making memories and keeping memories with us. Sharing these will ensure that Mum never really leaves us.

Mum had a wicked sense of humour. I can remember a 15 year old me, stranded down the skatepark, in the middle of the rain. Mum calling me up to ask if I was getting wet…then hanging up. Now in hindsight, this sounds like a cruel snippet from a really sad story, but it’s more of a testament to how we played off each other. I always considered this payback after I told mum I was going to, and then proceeding to jump down a (2ft) well. Mum of course not knowing it was filled in…That story still made her swear, then laugh!

So I know that there hasn’t been much of an update in terms of marathon training, but I promise more will follow. If in the meantime I ask you please to share this website with as many people and bribe, force, ask nicely that they subscribe and/or share this around. That would be great! (also any comments for feedback would be awesome too!)

As always, here is my justgiving link…Thank you and goodnight! x

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chrisgoodallrunning

Ok so here goes, I’m not particularly great at this whole ‘blogging’ thing, nor do I really know what I’m doing, but hey let’s see what happens!

About Me

So my name is Chris Goodall and as of today (23rd July 2019), I have been accepted by Macmillan to run the London Marathon in 2020. It’s going to be an excited journey preparing for this and that’s what this whole blog is about – Documenting how I get on with the training, and fundraising in the build up to this.

Why Am I Doing This?

The reason why I signed on to take this challenge is because of the woman in the picture below;

Heather Mary Goodall. Black cardigan enthusiast. ABBA lover. Holiday Maker. Family Orientated.

And my Mum

This year, she passed away from a grade 4 Glioblastoma. It really did come on so quick, and it tore my family to shreds. I don’t want to go into too much detail at this point but what I will say is without the help of the Macmillan nurses who came in to help, I don’t think we’d of coped. They acted as an emotional rock for my family and helped my Mum with her final days. Words cannot explain how grateful we all are that they were there.

Giving Back – The Plan and the Goal

So here’s what this is all about. I want to give back to the charity that helped so much. I want to do something on a larger scale to help. So I entered the London Marathon with the intention of raising some money to aid Macmillan in any way that I can.

So for my first week, this is the plan;

• Start a blog
• Start a just giving page
• Begin to structure ideas for fundraising
• Start collecting donations
• Start developing a training programme (to arrive next entry)

The Goal

I need to raise £2500 to be able to take part, which I will begin fundraising for that over the coming weeks. I don’t want to just stop there though, which is why I need everyone’s help

And that’s really it for now. I have a just giving page set up which can be accessed via the link below:

I really would appreciate if people could sign up to a mailing list as well. I won’t bombard you with junk, but I will email out updates and various ideas I have for fundraising. Don’t be a stranger 🙂

Feel free to comment and make suggestions – I’ll need all the help I can get!!!!!

Thanks!
Chris
x